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Probably half the people who frequent this website, if not more, are some form of web engineer or at the very least are web-adjacent. It’s a function of UX bein

Probably half the people who frequent this website, if not more, are some form of web engineer or at the very least are web-adjacent. It’s a function of UX being a core paradigm of that work that leads to such frequent reflections about a submitted link’s “finer points.” I understand the posts are extremely repetitive, but I’ve not seen a non-regressive attempt to account for this clear and evident desire to discuss this on HN’s part. As far as I know, HN has never tried to have a different comment section for this or other “””offtopic””” discussions, it’s only ever harangued people for talking about it. I was a roofer in my twenties, three decades ago. When you ride around with roofers, you inevitably hear “oh, that one’s a piece of shit. Oh that one’s nice. Oh, they screwed the pooch with that flashing. Oh, that pattern looks great.” It’s part of the trade to reflect on other roofs, and it comes with the territory in most trades, ime, to talk to other tradespeople about best practices. I’ve long thought splitting the comment section into Topic and Offtopic would result in better user experience, as well as tagging posts, being able to mute other users, and a million other features forums had twenty (!) years ago. I already know how desperately HN insists upon itself, but this is my frustration with the moderation surrounding these points. Users have no customization of the experience, they want to talk about the experience, HN says no, of course not.

dang 4y ago
Trade talk about craft is indeed great but HN has tons of that on lots of things. Thousands of identical complaints on a perennial annoyance is not interesting material to read. It may be satisfying to vent or to upvote, but let's not confuse indignation with intellectual interest. That's a fundamental distinction if you want to understand HN. There are plenty of such repetitive/indignant symptoms and one of our jobs is to dampen them so they don't crowd out the things that actually are interesting to read. If we didn't do this, HN would consist of almost nothing but sensationalism, indignation, and the few hottest topics of the moment (ChatGPT these days). It's our job not to let that happen. Having a separate comment section for this kind of thing would be a moderation nightmare and I don't think it would add to the quality of the site—quite the opposite. I once had a conversation with a founder of a (much) larger forum than HN, who told me that creating such a section (or something recognizably like it) was the biggest mistake they ever made. I hear you about the frustration though. It's true that HN lacks a lot of features. There are many different ways to structure an internet forum/community—many more than have ever been tried, and I feel sure that there's still plenty of room for new ones to flourish. People feel understandably frustrated when this forum doesn't match the one that they imagine and believe (perhaps correctly!) would be much more satisfying.

dang 4y ago

Trade talk about craft is indeed great but HN has tons of that on lots of things. Thousands of identical complaints on a perennial annoyance is not interesting material to read. It may be satisfying to vent or to upvote, but let's not confuse indignation with intellectual interest. That's a fundamental distinction if you want to understand HN. There are plenty of such repetitive/indignant symptoms and one of our jobs is to dampen them so they don't crowd out the things that actually are interesting to read. If we didn't do this, HN would consist of almost nothing but sensationalism, indignation, and the few hottest topics of the moment (ChatGPT these days). It's our job not to let that happen. Having a separate comment section for this kind of thing would be a moderation nightmare and I don't think it would add to the quality of the site—quite the opposite. I once had a conversation with a founder of a (much) larger forum than HN, who told me that creating such a section (or something recognizably like it) was the biggest mistake they ever made. I hear you about the frustration though. It's true that HN lacks a lot of features. There are many different ways to structure an internet forum/community—many more than have ever been tried, and I feel sure that there's still plenty of room for new ones to flourish. People feel understandably frustrated when this forum doesn't match the one that they imagine and believe (perhaps correctly!) would be much more satisfying.